Art in the Shadow of the W

I managed to see James Nizam's Looking In, Looking Out, Centre A's group video documentary show Neighbourhoods and the SAFE/NOT SAFE show at Gallery Gachet (basically all the things I had my eye on in my arts preview)within two evenings of each other last weekend. All dealt in different ways with Eastside communities and spaces; the old Woodward's building, the Downtown Eastside and historic East Vancouver neighbourhoods like Chintatown, Oppenheimer, Strathcona, etc. so as a group they were a powerful look at the city as art.

Nizam's opening was first, so I got a good look at his polished photography taken from inside the old Woodward's building. Haunting images of abandoned staircases, ladders leading into dark holes and windows looking out on a glowing surreality outside all contribute to a feeling of abandonment and "urban exploration". We are tourists here, exploring a space that we (and perhaps not even the artist?) are not allowed to be in, so there is a voyeuristic aspect as well.

In the presentation booklet, the art directors wrote about the lack of narrative in the images, especially concerning a building with as much history and controversy behind it. Nizam doesn't argue anything, just shows the building's slow decay. Without the context of the titles, there is nothing to indicate which building you are looking at. After we have vistited the exquisitely crafted world of composition, colour and exposure, we are free to leave without passing judgement or really taking away anything meaningful.

And yet the distance between us and the subject is unavoidable, particularly when we are crammed into a sterile west side gallery, drinking free red wine and mingling with arty hipsters. We are on the outside, looking in, and then looking out again. The gaze is compromized, as the post-modernists like to say.

This contrasts severely with SAFE/NOT SAFE and Neighbourhoods which I saw the next night. Neighbourhoods was a group show of documentaries about Vancouver's Eastside communities, by people who are tied to them, either because of where they live or where they grew up. The one I saw was called "Behind the Billboards on Prior Street" and dealt expertly with the way the Georgia Street viaduct intersects viable living space with commuters who are encouraged to rush past, glancing up only occasionally at commercial billboards. I would have watched more, but the show's setup in a large brick building (which I am newly in love with), with televisions and headsets surrounding a loud group of mingling people, was not optimal. It was hard to tell which sets were playing what film, hard to hear the sound, and hard to time which films were starting next. But it was very intriguing and I will definitely be back on a less busy day. I left with a lot of new information about this area of town, incidentally an area that I have recently moved to, and also with a new appreciation for how the urban landscape can translate to art.

I thought a lot about this and how the Eastside neighbourhoods, particularly the DTSE, are not really viewed as true neighbourhoods by the rest of the city. Instead, it is viewed as a repository of filth and fear and a place to be avoided at all costs. SAFE/NOT SAFE transforms that idea into something concrete and shows that the downtown eastside is it's own community, and can be both safe, and unsafe, though perhaps not in the way we would think. 30 women that live and work in the area were given disposable cameras and asked to take photos of places that they thought were safe and unsafe. What was presented there was surprising. Doorways, staircases, and dark corners of rooming houses were juxtaposed with photos of drop-in centres and parks. Like Nizam's photos, these often contained no inherent narrative. An alley can be a beautiful thing when it is empty, according to one artist, but can also be a place of great fear when you don't know who's in it. Superimposed onto the disposable-camera quality prints are strong feelings of relief, hope, fear, anger, distrust, disgust, pride and shame and some sentiments printed out on cardboard boxes - similar to what you would see a homeless person holding - added to the narrative and also to the "street" feel.

The back gallery of Gallery Gachet was set up to be a little like the street, with chain link fence attached to the wall and the prints pinned to it with clothes pins. In a way it looked a little like a back alley, with garbage stuck to it. Instead of the posh feeling of Nizam's show, here were denizens of the DTSE milling about, commenting on the art and drinking miller light from cans. I don't want to pass judgment any of the shows. I enjoyed them both so much, but while I loved Nizam's beautifully processed and mounted prints for the evening, it was the narratives of Neighbourhoods and SAFE/NOT SAFE that stayed with me long after I had left the galleries, walking home through the streets I had just seen depicted.